A blanket statement could be made about driving over here: you need a death wish.

Essentially, there are no rules:
There are speed limits, but NO one follows them.
There are turn lanes, but you can turn from any lane.
There are parking spaces, but you can park anywhere (any when I say anywhere, I mean pretty much anywhere!)

The traffic situation over here is interesting to say the very least. All roads are at least 3 lanes in each direction; most are 4. Everyone drives way too fast, swerves in and out of traffic and changes lanes without signaling. People turn left from the far right lane. They go straight from the left lane. And the roundabouts are my favorite because who knows what is going to happen. Additionally, people sometimes dart out into the street and cars swerve to get out of the way (sometimes). Everyone drives for themselves and doesn’t care about anyone else on the road.

Now that said, driving with someone (like some of the people I work with) who LOVE driving like this, it can be fun. It’s almost like you are in a video game…

Back to parking.

When I said people park anywhere I was not kidding. The generally accepted rule is that you can park anywhere so long as you are not really blocking traffic. So on the side streets, people park ON the center lane because cars can get by on both sides. Earlier in the week I saw an SUV just pull up on to the curb and parked with the front 2 tires on the curb and the back end sort of in the street. So you have to be creative…

Now at this point, I’m sure some of you are thinking…hmm there must be a fair amount of accidents here. And it’s true, there are. I have seen several in my short week here. The thing to note about the accidents however is not how often they happen but how they are handled. The one rule about driving that is followed is that if you are in an accident you CANNOT move your vehicle until the police get there. AT ALL. Meaning that if you get into an accident in the middle of the intersection, you stay right where you are…in the center of traffic. So that’s part of the cause of the traffic problems here. Blockages are caused by accidents…enough said